Chapter 1 Gilded Chains

The champagne flute felt dangerously fragile in my hand. Across the manicured lawn, my husband, Carter, laughed, the sound as polished and perfect as everything else in his world. Our world, supposedly. The setting sun gilded the scene, casting long shadows from the half-constructed skeleton of our dream home—the “Vance Manor,” as the engraved invitation had proclaimed. A monument to our love, he’d called it.

I felt a prickle under my skin, a restless energy that had been building all evening. It was the moon. It was always worse near the full moon. I’d blamed it on stress, on the pressure of the party, on anything but the truth I’d spent a lifetime suppressing.

“Another success, darling,” a board member’s wife gushed, touching my arm. I flinched, barely suppressing a snarl. Her perfume, cloying and floral, assaulted my senses. Get a grip, Luna, I commanded myself. Smile.

“Thank you, Beatrice. It’s all Carter’s doing.” My voice sounded distant, strained to my own ears. I needed air, away from the clatter of fine china and the drone of hollow congratulations.

I slipped away from the main group, using the pretext of admiring the “foundation stone”—a ridiculous slab of marble Carter had insisted on for the occasion. The earth here was freshly turned, dark and rich. The scent of soil and damp concrete was a relief after the suffocating sweetness of the party.

That’s when I heard it. Voices, low and conspiratorial, coming from around the corner of the deep excavation pit.

Carter’s voice. And another, gravelly and unfamiliar.

“…are you certain it’s enough?” the stranger asked.

“The texts were clear,” Carter replied, his tone not the loving one he used with me, but cold, calculating. The voice he used to close a hostile takeover. “The bond is tied to the object. As long as it remains buried within the confines of the hearth, the power remains contained. Dormant.”

My blood ran cold. Object? Power? I pressed myself against the rough concrete wall, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. The world seemed to narrow, the party noises fading into a dull buzz. All I could hear was the shovel biting into the earth.

Scrape. Thud.

I risked a glance.

Carter stood there, his designer shoes caked in mud. He wasn’t using the shovel; a hulking man I didn’t recognize was. Carter held a small, velvet-wrapped bundle. With a reverence that felt obscene, he unwrapped it.

The air left my lungs.

It was the chain. My grandmother’s silver chain. The one she made me swear never to remove. The one I’d foolishly believed I’d lost weeks ago during the move to the temporary apartment. The one that, whenever I wore it, quieted the beast inside.

A low growl built in my throat. I choked it back.

Carter held the chain up. The dying sun caught the links, making them gleam like a malevolent tear.

“A final touch,” he murmured, not to the man, but to the chain itself. Then, he dropped it into the small hole the man had dug at the very center of the foundation.

The gravelly-voiced man quickly shoveled dirt over it.

“And that’s that,” Carter said, brushing his hands together as if disposing of garbage. “Now, my little moon will truly be bound to this place. To me. Forever.”

The words were a physical blow. Bound. Not loved. Not cherished. Contained. Like a specimen. A asset.

Rage, white-hot and pure, erupted through the cold shock. The fragile champagne flute in my hand splintered with a sharp crack. I didn’t feel the cut, didn’t see the blood. I saw only my husband’s smiling, treacherous face as he turned, his eyes scanning the area.

I stepped back into the shadows, my entire body trembling. Not with fear. Not anymore.

With a fury so profound it felt like a new kind of gravity.

I looked down at my hand. A shard of crystal was embedded in my palm. As I watched, the skin around it seemed to ripple, the tiny wound sealing itself shut in seconds. A trick of the light. It had to be.

I forced my breathing to slow. I forced my face into a mask of placid calm. I walked back to the party, my steps measured. I accepted a fresh glass of champagne from a passing waiter.

Carter spotted me and beelined over, his arm snaking around my waist possessively. “There you are, my love. I was worried I’d lost you.” His touch made my skin crawl.

I tilted my head up, offering him the smile he expected. The smile of the woman he thought he owned. “Just admiring our future, darling.”

His eyes searched mine for a moment, and I saw a flicker of something—suspicion? Satisfaction?—before it was gone. “It’s all for you, Luna. All of it.”

The moon, nearly full, began its ascent over the trees. Its light felt different tonight. Not gentle, but hungry. It called to the thing inside me, the thing he had just tried to bury.

The chain was gone. The cage was open.

And the beast was waking up.